Stagwell's global media business Stagwell
Media Platform became the first to integrate Microsoft Copilot, which is powered by the open standard protocol Model Context Protocol (MCP).
MCP has been embedded into the paid-search workflow
of Assembly Global, the network's multichannel media agency, and can act as a secure connection layer between Microsoft Advertising APIs and AI agents.
In June, Stagwell externally launched
"The Media Machine," the holding company’s artificial intelligence (AI)-powered agentic operating system.
"The pilot was connected to live Microsoft Advertising campaigns operated by
Assembly and focused primarily on auditing, reporting, optimization and opportunity discovery workflows rather than autonomous campaign management," Dan Roberts, global senior vice president of search
for Stagwell Media Platform, told MediaPost.
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Roberts detailed the process, but probably the most interesting response came when MediaPost asked whether marketers had
and received specific expectations on the results.
"Yes and no," Roberts said. "Initially, many people assumed the value of AI in advertising would come from conversational campaign
management — using chat to create, edit or manage campaigns. What we learned through the Microsoft and Stagwell pilot is that experienced marketers are already
highly efficient at those tasks through existing platform interfaces."
The real opportunity was different, Roberts said.
Rather than replacing practitioners, MCP enabled us to connect
AI agents directly to live advertising data and workflows so they could analyze large numbers of campaigns simultaneously, identify optimization opportunities, detect trends, surface insights and
automate time-consuming audit and reporting processes.
"In other words, the greatest value came not from campaign execution, but from scaling expertise," he said. "The agent acts as a
specialist colleague that can review more data, more frequently, than any individual practitioner, while keeping humans fully in control of decision-making."
That shift in thinking became the core
learning from the pilot, Roberts said.
"The future isn't AI replacing marketers; it's AI amplifying marketers by removing repetitive analysis and helping them focus on strategy, optimization
and client outcomes," he said.
Copilot, the agent, can translate natural-language requests into API calls, retrieve campaign data, analyze performance and return structured
recommendations.
Stagwell’s agency GALE led development of The Media Machine in collaboration with media agency Assembly and Stagwell Media Platform. It automates and optimizes media
planning, buying, and reporting using more than 20 intelligent agents to manage cross-platform activation across major networks like Google, Meta, and TikTok. It also requires human insight for every
decision.
Rather than requiring practitioners to log into another platform, the agent sits alongside them and can access live Microsoft Advertising data in real time.
The Copilot
agent ingests live campaign data and applies Assembly's audit frameworks automatically across accounts, markets and campaigns. Outputs are returned as client audits and optimization recommendations
become available. Marketers remain in control of all decisions, Roberts explained.
For example, when the agent is told to "review all Microsoft Ads campaigns and identify the largest
optimization opportunities,' the agent would accesses the campaign data, runs the audit logic, determines where issues or opportunities exist, and produces an audit in minutes rather than requiring a
manual review.
Stagwell has two agentic systems. The Media Machine is the company's first agentic operating system built by Code and Theory.
The Media Machine is a media-specific,
full-lifecycle agentic operating system built by GALE.
"The pilot was connected to live Microsoft Advertising campaigns operated by Assembly and focused primarily on auditing, reporting,
optimization and opportunity discovery workflows rather than autonomous campaign management," Roberts said.